1 in 5 marriage age Chinese men to remain bachelors within 10 years

15:44, January 13, 2010

According to the "2010 Social Blue Paper" recently released by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS), there is currently a serious gender imbalance problem among the population below 19 years old in China.

The report said that for every 100 girls below 4 years old, there are 123.26 boys in the same age range. If this situation remains unchanged, the number of marriage age Chinese men will be more than that of Chinese women by 30 to 40 million in 2020, meaning that 1 in 5 marriage age Chinese men will remain bachelors.

"Normally, the gender proportion between males and females should be 105±2. This means that for every 100 females, the figure for males should be between 103 and 107. The gender proportion has always been determined by biology through out recorded human history.

As the mortality of males is higher than that of females, the gender proportion will generally be balanced when they reach the marriage age," Zhang Yi, a researcher with the CASS Research Institute of Population and Labor Economy told the Beijing Sci-Tech Report.

He added, "According to the data gathered from China's several population censuses, we discovered that the gender proportion had always maintained within the normal level until the 1980s, in which the gender proportion for children exceeded the 107 benchmark. Thereafter, the gender imbalance has been growing wider year after year."

Some experts noted that the implementation of the one-child policy has caused parents to avoid reporting the births of many female babies, leading to a statistical imbalance. However, studies on the results of several population censuses and educational yearbooks show that the gender imbalance among newly-born female and male babies does exist.